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Recently, Dr. Daniel Campo, associate professor and program director for City and Regional Planning in the School of Architecture and Planning (SA+P), delivered an informative lecture on “Postindustrial Appropriation: Do-it-yourself Reclamation in the American Rustbelt” hosted by CANactions at Ducat Gallery in Kyiv, Ukraine.
Campo was invited to Kyiv as part of an MIT-led team to investigate postindustrial sites in Kyiv and other Ukrainian cities. The group’s 10-day residence also took them to visit sites in Dnipro, Zaporozhye and Odessa. Campo also participated in a panel discussion concerning the future of Kyiv’s Podil district and its array of postindustrial waterfront properties.
Postindustrial Appropriation documents grassroots efforts to reclaim, reuse, preserve and enjoy iconic but economically obsolete industrial places in the American Rustbelt and in other settings of urban decline. Exploring a range of large-scale deindustrialized sites including automobile factories in Detroit, an iron mill in metropolitan Pittsburgh, grain elevators in Buffalo, and port sites in New York City, it tells the unlikely stories of these reclaimed places and the do-it-yourself protagonists that have led these revivals. After decades of vacancy, deterioration, demolition, failed plans and plans that failed to materialize, DIY actors have succeeded in bringing activity back to sites that have stubbornly resisted both public sector revitalization initiatives and private sector-led redevelopment schemes. While these experiments in postindustrial reclamation are far from complete, they defy conventional expectations about how such places can be reused and suggest new ways to preserve, adapt and engage abandoned urban sites.
View the video below:
